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QCon SF 2009: Simon Guest, Patterns of Cloud Computing

Stefan Tilkov,

These are my unedited notes from Simon Guest's talk about Patterns for Cloud Computing at QCon SF 2009.

  • "This talk is about Jim, he has many questions about cloud computing…"
  • 5 pattern of cloud-based applications
  • Definition of cloud computing
  • Different models:
    • Applications must run on-premises – complete control, upfront capital costs
    • Application runs at a hoster – lower capital costs, but pay for fixed capacity even if idle
    • Shared, multi-tenant, pay as you go – pay someone for a pool of computing resources that can be applied to a set of applications
  • Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud – private cloud useful e.g. for telcos offering this to their customers
  • Windows Azure – compute, storage, management, based on 64bit Windows images
  • SQL Azure - RDBMS
  • .NET Service - service bus and access control
  • [ed.: Who thinks of these names, and even more importantly, why doesn't Microsoft fire them?]
  • Different models infrastructure (IaaS) vs. Platform as a Service (PaaS) as main paths
  • Slide shows that MS offers a higher-level stack than Amazon - EC2 provides instance, Windows Azure model is a platform as a service model
  • [Seems to me this is one of the major problems of Azure – it seems neither one or the other, as I would define PaaS as what GAE does, which is much higher-level than simply a Windows Server]

Pattern #1: Using the Cloud for Scale

  • Shows how to scale up a Web app using more machines, load balancer, database partitioning
  • A lot of work - a lot of money
  • Designed for peak capacity, idle for a lot of time
  • Much easier to let cloud vendor handle this dynamically
  • Prerequisite for successful scaling in the cloud: having a queue to decouple web tier and backend
  • Starbucks [of all possible examples! ;-)] as an example for queueing
  • Demo: "PrimeSolvr" (Web 2.0 because it's missing the last "e")
  • 3 takeaways: 1) core tenet of cloud computing: ability to scale up/down 2) understand how to communicate between roles and nodes 3) strategy for when to scale up and down

Pattern #2: Using the cloud for multi tenancy

  • Simply approach internally: one application per customer - works only for small numbers
  • Implications: Schema customizations, UI customizations
  • 3 options for data in a multi-tenant environment: 1) share DB between customers 2) each customer gets a separate DB - hard to do on-premise, much easier in the cloud 3) fixed DB schema with customizations on a tenant-by-tenant basis
  • Demo: ASP.NET MVC app using the HTTP host name to switch UI and DB Schema
  • Takeaways: 1) Consider multi-tenancy first, hard to retrofit 2) Design considerations must include both data and UI specifics 3) Identity as a very important consideration, see MS Patterns and Practices paper on multi-tenancy ID

Pattern #3: Using the cloud for compute

  • Popularized by MapReduce
  • Apache Hadoop, Cloudera, Amazon Elastic MapReduce, Hadoop implementation
  • Typical on-premise solution: very infrastructure-heavy, complex, expensive
  • No explicit framework implementation on Azure
  • Demo (inspired my MapReduce): Development Fabric (local execution environment), not using virtualization [similar to GAE environment]; next step is upload to Azure staging area, next level production
  • Takeaways: MapReduce very visible, although can be hard to initally grasp, learn about existing implementations; MS academic effort: Dryad

Pattern #4: Using the cloud for (infinite) storage

  • Problem: Affinity between hardware and data
  • how does the cloud help? breaks the affinity
  • virtualized layer between the data you store and the hardware underneath
  • Three ways: blobs, tables, relational
  • MS: Azure Blog Storage – REST API (using GET (even range requests) and PUT); PutBlock API to move blocks - transaction build up [must look this up]
  • Azure Table Storage (Key/Value pairs)
  • Initial relational effort: SQL Server Data Services (MIX 08) - REST API on top of SQL
  • Customer reaction: We want to do TDS (MS native DB protocol)
  • SQL Data Services (MIX 09), late SQL Azure: TDS (SQL Server) in the Cloud
  • Similarity between internal and cloud architecture makes it easier for customers [agreed, even though this might me more of a problem]
  • Demo: SQL Azure (http://sql.azure.com); Codeplex sqlazuremw (migration wizard) - migration from local SQL Server DB to the cloud (subset of SQL Server functionality, e.g. restrictions on certain value types, clustered indexes)
  • Takeaways: 1) Storage in the cloud may look the same, but breaks the affinity problem 2) Pricing is relevant 3) SQL Azure factor for moving to cloud in the first place=
    • *

Pattern #5: Using the cloud for communications

  • Classic approach: VAN, now replace by Internet direct file transfers
  • Cloud approach: REST-based queues could be used for communication - not commonly used, problem: need to pass tokens around
  • Putting a web facade in front of the queue doesn't work too well either due to firewall problems. HTTP polling is bad [why?]
  • MS Solution: .NET Service Bus
  • TCP Relay: outbound bi-directional socket, tunneled through the bus and kept alive on both sides. Enables routing of arbitrary protocols across company boundaries
  • Alternative: Message Buffer, exposed using AtomPub, support retrieve, peek, lock
  • Takeaways: Be careful consuming REST-based queues because of shared secret
  • additional trouble because of REST
  • service bus as potential solution

Last question: How can patterns be integrated?

  • 1) Sample PHP (!) application running on Windows Azure, ported to GAE and EC2 (as ASP.NET)
  • 2) Map reduce spreads load across Amazon, Google, MS
  • 3) Store results in SQL Azure database

  • 4) Coordinate communication using .NET Service Bus

  • How many prime numbers between 1 and 10,000,000? 40 jobs of 250,000 numbers

  • WPF client app sends off job
  • "I'm gonna submnit the job and pray"

  • Spontaneous applause as the demo actually worked

  • make sure you have a clear definition of cloud computing

  • explore the 5 usage patterns
  • think about the next steps for implementation and migration